Spa City commissioner seeks 3 a.m. last call

SARATOGA Springs >> According to Saratoga County officials, not much has changed at the board of supervisors regarding last call for bars and restaurants, but that won’t stop Public Safety Commissioner Christian Mathiesen from bringing the issue in front of them again.

The Saratoga Springs City Council last forwarded the proposal for an earlier bar closing time to the county in July 2012, where it was rejected in an 8-1 vote in the legislative and research committee. That halted the plan before it had the chance to be discussed by the full board of supervisors.

Mathiesen has wanted to change last call from 4 a.m. to 3 a.m. ever since he campaigned on that platform during the 2011 election, but according to the New York State Liquor Authority, any change to bar’s closing time needs to be implemented countywide.

Advertisement

City Accounts Commissioner John Franck said he was also compelled to make changes to the city’s last call following the hit and run death of death of Ryan Rossley, who was struck after he had an altercation the evening of St. Patrick’s Day 2010 on Caroline Street.

While Franck believes Mathiesen should go through the process of bringing the proposal to the county government, he doesn’t believe it will go through unless Albany County also makes the same change to its last call.

The last time it was proposed, one of the big concerns, according to Franck, was that late night revelers who wanted to keep drinking past 3 a.m. would just drive to a neighboring county to do so.

Since then, Warren and Essex counties have changed their last call from 4 a.m. to 3 a.m. which is one of the reasons Mathiesen is giving the overture another go at the county level.

Even though he’s met opposition, it’s important to keep trying, Mathiesen said, because it sheds a light on the problems the city faces.

Art Johnson, chairman of the county Legislative and Research Committee and Wilton supervisor, said Warren and Essex counties don’t have the same kind of “vibrant downtown” as Saratoga Springs and that, as far as he knew, there hasn’t been any change from the position the county took the last time the idea was pitched.

Paul Sausville, chairman of the board of supervisors and Malta supervisor, said the composition of the board “contains most of the same members who voted to retain the 4 a.m. closing of taverns.”

However, Sausville said, if there are new data or statistics, the full board would be interested in reviewing it.

During Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting, Mathiesen said one of the reasons he was drafting a new resolution was the positive impact the change had made for the police in Warren County, who, according to Mathiesen, are receiving fewer calls since the change to last call and say that there has been a “significant improvement in the atmosphere on South Street in Glens Falls,” where many of the bars are located.

Glens Falls Police Chief Williams F. Valenza said that a check of police department records shows “that calls for events like fights, disturbances and assaults dropped by about 30 percent between the hours of 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. as compared to the same time the previous year.”

Mayor Joanne Yepsen said she hasn’t taken a stand on the issue one way or another but that she was thinking about alternative ways to keep the city’s nightlife scene safe and economically productive.